Townleap vs Nomads.com
Nomads.com — renamed from Nomad List in 2024 — is a paid city-ranking database and community for digital nomads and remote workers, covering 1,377 cities. We're a permanent-relocation planner. Below is the honest version, including the parts where they beat us.
Nomads.com is built for people whose next stop is three months away. Townleap is built for people whose next stop is permanent. Neither of us is doing the other's job badly — we're doing different jobs.
Nomads.com is best for picking where to spend the next few months with fast wifi, good weather and other remote workers to meet.
Townleap is best for picking a country you intend to still be living in a decade from now.
Before we sell you anything
Nomads.com's data is better than its reputation. It moved off crowdsourced spreadsheets to UN, WHO, IMF and World Bank datasets, with outlier removal and median calculation, and its scores regenerate every ten minutes. The gap isn't quality — it's that a Nomad Score is optimised for arriving, and we're optimised for staying.
What each one actually has
✓ has it · ~ sort of · ✕ doesn't. Checked August 2026.
| Feature | Nomads.com | Townleap |
|---|---|---|
| What things cost, allegedly | ✓ | ✓ |
| How to legally stay past 90 days | ✕ | ✓ |
| What's left after the tax office | ✕ | ✓ |
| Whether you're safe, and allowed to complain about it | ~ | ✓ |
| Can your spouse get a job | ✕ | ✓ |
| Somewhere for the kids to go all day | ✕ | ~ |
| A quiz that decides for you | ~ | ✓ |
| Retirement, but abroad | ✕ | ✓ |
| What it costs you | ✕ | ✓ |
| Do they want your email | ✕ | ✓ |
Cost of living data
Residency and visa program comparison
Take-home pay modelled against local income tax
Safety statistics plus democracy and political-freedom scoring
Dependent and partner work rights on each visa
Family and schooling data
Guided recommendation flow
Pension visa thresholds and retiree-specific guidance
Price
Account required to see the content
Coverage, plainly
1,377 cities in 190+ countries; ~43,000 members (Nomads.com, Aug 2026)
140 cities across 60+ countries, weighted for permanence rather than novelty
Pros and cons, both of us
Nomads.com
- +1,377 cities in 190+ countries — ten times our coverage.
- +Nomad Score regenerates every ten minutes, so seasonal swings show up instead of being averaged away.
- +Underlying data comes from UN, WHO, IMF and World Bank sources with outlier removal, not a crowdsourced spreadsheet.
- +Internet speed, live temperature, air quality and coworking data, which is exactly what matters for a three-month stay.
- +A real community with meetups in 100+ cities — the one thing a dataset can't replicate.
- +One-time payment with a lifetime tier, rather than an endless subscription.
- −Zero residency data. Their own terms of service tell you to verify visas yourself before working in another country.
- −No modelling of income tax, so 'cost of living' is only half the financial picture.
- −Lifestyle tags stand in for governance — LGBTQ+ friendliness and racism signals are useful, but they aren't a democracy index.
- −Nothing for families: no schools, no childcare, no dependent rights.
- −Paywalled, and the price has moved around a lot — published figures range from $9.99 to $99 depending on when you looked.
- −The site contradicts itself on member counts and meetup numbers, which makes any figure hard to quote confidently.
Townleap
- +Residency routes, post-tax income and governance scoring — the three things that decide a permanent move — are the core product, not an afterthought.
- +Free with no account, so you can check a country at 2am without a checkout flow.
- +Family and retiree surfaces exist: schools, spouse work rights, pension visa thresholds.
- +Every figure is attributed to a named public source.
- −140 cities to their 1,377. For anywhere outside our list, they simply have data and we don't.
- −No community. No meetups, no chat, no members map — if you want people, they have people.
- −No live weather, air quality or internet-speed refresh cycle; our data updates on a scraper cadence, not every ten minutes.
- −We're worse for short stays, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
So which one
Use Nomads.com if you're choosing where to spend the next few months, you care about wifi speed and current weather, or you want a community of other remote workers to actually meet in person.
Go to Nomads.com →Use Townleap if you're not coming back: you need a residency route you qualify for, an honest post-tax income figure, a read on how democratic the place is, and answers about schools, spouses and pensions.
The parts of Townleap this page is talking about
All free. None of them ask who you are.
Swipe through 140 cities. It asks what you actually want, then argues with you about it.
Your passport, your job, your savings — which residency routes you'd survive.
Numbeo prices, arranged for someone signing a lease rather than booking a hotel.
What's left of your salary after the local tax office has had a look.
Pension visas, income thresholds, and healthcare you can actually get onto.
Questions people actually ask
Did Nomad List change its name?
Yes. Nomad List rebranded to Nomads.com in 2024 on its tenth anniversary. The old nomadlist.com domain still resolves and serves the new site.
Is Nomads.com free?
No. City pages show partial data publicly, but filters, community and deeper per-city data require a paid membership — from $9.99 one-time as of August 2026, though the pricing has changed repeatedly. Townleap is free with no account.
Does Nomad List cover visas and residency?
Only visa-free tourist entry, as a filter. There is no residency program comparison, and their terms of service explicitly tell users to verify visa and work-permit legality themselves. Townleap's Pathfinder covers 55 residency routes across 20+ countries.
What's the difference between a digital nomad tool and a relocation tool?
A nomad tool optimises for arrival: wifi, weather, cost this month, who else is around. A relocation tool optimises for permanence: whether you can get residency, what you earn after local tax, whether your partner can work, what happens to your pension, and whether the government is stable. Nomads.com is the first. Townleap is the second.
Which is better for families?
Townleap, though neither is a specialist. Nomads.com's filters are lifestyle-oriented — nightlife, surfing, music scenes — and carry no schooling or dependent-visa data. Townleap includes school types, tuition estimates, family scoring and spouse work rights per residency route.